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The Community Involvement Community of Practice
A Model for Collaboration in the Field
Katherine West Slevin1, Nomampondo Barnabas2,
Stella Kirkendale3, Morenike Ukpong4 1Global
Campaign for Microbicides, PATH, Washington, DC,
USA 2Global Campaign for Microbicides, PATH,
Johannesburg, South Africa 3Family Health
International, Durham, NC, USA 4New HIV Vaccine
and Microbicide Advocacy Society, Lagos, Nigeria
Some Benefits of Community Engagement1
Creates a conducive environment for community-research partnerships.
Ensures ongoing two-way information exchange, feedback, and dialogue between community and research team.
Strengthens community capacity to articulate and address their own social and development needs (in turn helping to prepare for eventual introduction and access to new HIV-prevention technologies).
Enhances scientific validity and ethical integrity throughout the trial
Photos from the 2008 and 2009 CoP Annual Meetings
Methods Results The Community Involvement CoP
To facilitate greater sharing across networks and
research sites, the Global Campaign for
Microbicides established the Community
Involvement Community of Practice (CoP). The CoP
brings together community liaison officers and
others working on community engagement at
HIV-biomedical research trials. The CoP was
formed in 2008 and has resulted in a monthly
teleconferences (the notes of which are
distributed to all members), an online resource
center for community engagement, a members
directory to facilitate intra-member networking,
and two annual meetings at which learnt lessons
and improved practices were shared.
Members of the Community Involvement CoP at the
2009 Annual Meeting, Mombasa, Kenya
1Mobilization for Community Involvement in
Microbicide Trials A Report from a Dialogue in
Southern Africa. Washington, DC Global Campaign
for Microbicides 2004.
Conclusion A Model for Collaboration
Coordinated efforts to share lessons, materials,
and problem-solving strategies both within and
among trial networks adds value to the quality of
the community-engagement efforts by
HIV-prevention research teams. Until the
establishment of the CoP, this kind of synergy
happened within networks, but little
communication occurred across networks and
independent research centers. Providing an
innovative model that promotes learning and
networking among research sites and staff, the
CoP serves a much needed framework to
facilitate collaboration within the
HIV-prevention research field.
To learn more about the CoP and GCMs community
engagement work, please visit http//www.global-c
ampaign.org/comm-involvement.htm